Emil Sayegh - CEO Codero Hosting

The Internet is the fuel that powers our current economy — ever growing, and allowing new industries and ideas to emerge day by day — and a lot of it is happening here in Texas. According to the TechAmerica Foundation’s Cyberstates 2013 report, the Internet and high-tech jobs provided a whopping 486,600 careers for Texans in 2012.

This week, the biggest names in the Internet industry will gather in Austin for HostingCon. Many of these companies, including Codero Hosting, are also members of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, or i2Coalition, an organization founded to support the growth of the $46 billion Internet infrastructure industry. A leading dedicated, managed and cloud hosting provider, Codero has worked with i2Coalition to protect and continue the Internet’s free flow of information and commerce. As the CEO of Codero, I look forward to joining with other Texas-based tech companies to welcome the industry to Austin.

Our capital is a great place for a national event like HostingCon. I have been part of this wonderful city since 1986. I have seen it grow, evolve and change into a true center of gravity for information technology. Internet infrastructure leaders and proud members of the i2Coalition such as SoftLayer, cPanel, Data Foundry Inc., Rackspace and Codero have established their headquarters and main offices in Texas, helping the Lone Star State obtain Cyberstates’ second ranking nationally for industry jobs in Internet, telecommunication and engineering services as well as semiconductor manufacturing.

Companies such as Cisco Systems Honeywell, and Amazon have recognized Texas’ growing technological industry and have set up divisional and corporate headquarters here. At the same time, Texas’ universities are producing tech-savvy graduates and advancements in the technological sector.

As Texas grows and matures in the high-tech industry, it’s imperative that it protects the ideas, innovation and new technology that are being developed by businesses.

At HostingCon, the i2Coalition is sponsoring a number of panels that examine some of the greatest threats to our industry, including a panel called “Money Stealing Trolls.” Of particular concern when it comes to threats to innovation are attacks by Patent Assertion Entities, or “patent trolls,” who seek to undermine technological progress for quick financial gain. These trolls have taken advantage of a broken patent system, allowing them to bring up patent infringement cases on small and large businesses. These lawsuits can
cost a company millions of dollars in litigation alone.

For this reason, many of the larger companies settle out of court. However, smaller companies like Codero attempting to grow in our economy also face these frivolous lawsuits. Patent trolls can cause small to medium-size companies to lose revenue, forcing them to cut salaries and jobs, and even in extreme cases file for bankruptcy. The tactics of the trolls are stifling innovation. Because of their actions, many companies hesitate to produce new products for fear of violating an unknown frivolous patent.

One of the i2Coalition’s top priorities is to bring about patent reform, and both the i2Coalition and Codero applaud Texas Sen. John Cornyn for introducing a bill known as the “Patent Abuse Reduction Act of 2013.” The act will “bring fairness to the discovery process,” Senator Cornyn says. The bill will also shift responsibility for the cost of litigation to the losing party. This will relieve small business from hefty litigation cost and punish patent trolls. The act also calls for “Transparency in Enforcement,” meaning all parties and persons that have direct financial interest in the outcome of the lawsuit must be revealed.

Cornyn is attempting to put an end to the chaos and economic stagnation these money stealing trolls create. We must stand up and support his efforts and the efforts of Texans as a whole to grow and develop in the technological world.

When industry giants and Texas-based high-tech businesses gather this week for HostingCon, we need to make sure it spells trouble for the trolls. We need to make sure that trolls don’t “Mess with Texas jobs.” The companies that power the Internet that we all cherish, essentially the nuts and bolts that hold this industry together, shouldn’t be messed with by patent trolls.

About: Codero Hosting delivers a complete hosting portfolio with unparalleled support, featuring the best of cloud capabilities and dedicated hosting performance. Chat with us for more info. Emil Sayegh is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. Emil joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.

High tech idea thieves steal Texas jobs is a post from: Codero dedicated hosting blog

A lot can go wrong in the closet

It’s time to get the word out to everyone. Outsourced Hosting services – dedicated, managed, cloud or hybrid are much better options in every case for small, medium, and start-up businesses. For businesses that are running an on-premise “data center” (sometimes quite literally in a closet), look at all the things that go with owning and operating your infrastructure.  There’s a lot going on behind that closet door, a lot of work, a lot of costs, and a lot of worry. That infrastructure means you’re stuck in a 3-5 year refresh cycle, with little flexibility to upgrade, and you have to do all kinds of gyrations to keep the “show” running. You have multiple contracts to manage and negotiate. Which means several points of contact – that include things like your internet service provider, hardware and software vendors; all different for the variety of devices and software that go into running your operation. Costs can be inconsistent and hard to predict. This might lead to budget creep, leaving you with some pretty hard choices to make in order to keep your infrastructure up and running. All this while there is huge budget pressure on your limited IT budget as it is.

You’ve got to get so many things right just to keep your operation running. Add any kind of geo-redundancy, factor in cooling and electrical costs and physical access controls and you start to get the picture of not only the challenges that are built in to this operation, but the minimal value the business gets from it compared to the tremendous costs. Sure, you own it, but you also feed it, you run it, you rebuild it all the time, and you take all the risks.

Hosting is the Answer!

Take power for instance, very few companies still provide their own power. Most power is purchased from power companies, and the same applies to computing today! Industry-standard, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis tells us how these costs are typically spread out: Hosted services can quickly turn that scenario around.  You save time, space, money and most of all worry. That is priceless! You know how they say “time is money”?  Well, hosted solutions save time in so many ways.  For starters, just think of all the time that goes to set up your infrastructure, then into running that “closet operation” – in terms of support, maintenance, patching, design, upgrades, deployment, and backup operations. All of those operational costs, power, cooling, lights, physical access, power backup, they all become a thing of the past.  With a hosted infrastructure, you can spin infrastructure up quickly without all those issues and do it in a way that is custom to your needs, and you pay for what you use.

It doesn’t take long to see that as you start to add these things up; a hosting service is a much more affordable option and better value to the business at the same time. You get enterprise-level infrastructure, faster connection speeds and an infrastructure that can quickly scale as you need more resources. Better yet, you are free to focus on your business, your customers, and your staff while someone else is making sure your infrastructure is running around the clock. To top it all off,  no contractual obligations! Pay your monthly or hourly fee, and that is it!

The Punch Line:  Hosting is not only better and faster, but also more than 15x cheaper!

As I said before, time is money, but the cost is “real” money. In order to get a clearer picture, let’s consider an example of what it costs to run just one server using some industry-standard numbers:

Now compare that to the total costs of running a similar infrastructure with a hosting service. You can’t!  As you can see, more than 15x less cost in a year is quite an advantage to hosting your infrastructure with a hosting services provider, as opposed to in your closet.  So you can save anywhere between 88% to 94% of you infrastructure costs if you choose to get out of the closet!  Well get out!  What are you waiting for?

At first you see in an on-premise scenario, physical servers initially present a minor cost, but when you factor in the operation, the maintenance, the TCO -that’s when it really hits in the pocketbook.

Remember:  That server requires a place to run it, power to operate, management, power to cool, physical and computing security measures, and last but not least, people to do all that. You just can’t match the value that hosting service provides; it eliminates your need to worry, your costs are more predictable, and you get an all around faster, cheaper, and better solution.

Whether you have a simple or complex environment, hosted solutions can be built to deliver a better value for your business in every case imaginable. Hosted services get you enterprise-grade reliability, performance, and 24×7 expert support; and none of the worries of doing it all yourself. It’s time to get out of that closet and step into the 21st century.

As always, let me know your thoughts, and if you have any questions by emailing me here.

About: Codero Hosting delivers a complete hosting portfolio with unparalleled support, featuring the best of cloud capabilities and dedicated hosting performance. Chat with us for more info. Emil Sayegh is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. Emil joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.

Get Out of the Closet! is a post from: Codero dedicated hosting blog

There, I shot some video of discussions our CEO, Emil Sayegh, participated in as part of “The Business of Cloud and Big Data – Power Panel”. Here are just a few of the video highlights from the panel discussion that I captured. Enjoy!

On-Demand Hybrid – The Holy Grail of Hosting
At CloudCon Expo SF, there was a lot of discussion about how to better integrate cloud computing with dedicated hosting resources for maximum performance. In this video Emil discusses the use of automation and APIs to easily bring together the cloud and dedicated hosting to create an on-demand hybrid model.

Takeaway: When it comes to making the flexibility of the cloud and dedicated hosting work together, it’s important to find components that make it easier and more efficient. That’s where automation and APIs come into play.

Growing Opportunities for the Cloud with Big Data Hosting
More and more discussion came out of CloudCon Expo SF about big data and the cloud. How do you integrate them? What’s the demand in the marketplace? To get them together and give this more thought, Emil discusses this opportunity with moderator Jim Kaskade, CEO of Infochimps.

Takeaway: Customers want and need private, dedicated hosting infrastructure to run their Big Data apps because of constant workloads. However, they also need the ability to burst into the cloud whether that is with Codero or on other cloud platforms like AWS. That’s where on-demand hybrid hosting comes into play.

Now don’t think this is all the videos we have of our travels, no! To see more from CloudCon Expo SF or to view all of our Codero videos, please visit our YouTube channel.

CloudCon Expo SF touched on everything from big data hosting to on-demand hybrid technology and Codero was excited to be a part of it. Thanks to everyone who came out to see Cloud and Big Data panel; and a special thanks to everyone who stopped by the Codero booth during the event.

This doesn’t mean we’re done traveling around talking about what we’re passionate about; on the contrary, we have more stops along the way this summer. So keep an eye out for Codero. To find out where we’ll be next, check out our upcoming travel plans.

Codero’s Road Trip Highlights: CloudCon Expo 2013 in San Francisco is a post from: Codero dedicated hosting blog

I can recall thinking to myself “man, talk about risky… betting your entire business on one guy to keep all this running… what happens if all of this craters… I need a partner… I need help!” And of course, to add to my worry that was Y2K and I was running a bunch of old-school Unix OS’s and software that DEPENDED on dates. What could possibly go wrong?

Fast-forward to today, I can honestly tell you that experience is firmly burned into my brain. It’s one of the reasons why I think I’m uniquely suited to be in the hosting business… because I can truly empathize with customers. I have literally been there.

I have yet to find an IT Manager or SMB owner that isn’t working to boot strap their businesses and manage their IT spend in a smarter way. I’m fortunate in that I get to spend my day trying to solve those problems for them. I get to use my experience when I was in their shoes to say “What would I want if I were them?”

Back then, I had a few rules for partners (and also the infamous sales guy that would randomly show up). I think several of my rules are still valid today for me. The list started out like this…

If you really want to help me:

1. Don’t waste my time
2. Simplify my life
3. Arm me with tools

#1 – Don’t waste my time – Get down to business
I don’t have time to chitchat. You may very well be a nice person and I’d love to get to know you. But usually, I’m far too busy. I don’t have a huge staff to offload to, so step one is let’s get business out of the way and cut to the chase. Efficiency and prioritization is a way of life to IT Managers. 

#2 – Simplify my life – Make it easy FOR ME!
If you have something that will make my life easier, I’m all ears. But you better realize right upfront I’m not made of money… refer to Rule #1! And make it easy FOR ME… not you…

Simple and elegant goes a long way for IT Managers. Complicated systems breed complicated troubleshooting, onerous failure modes, and long recovery cycles.

Now this is not to say that everything is simple. I’ve launched numerous Clouds and Cloud products, and not one of them would I classify as “simple.” But as Einstein said we should endeavor to “make things as simple as it can be, but not simpler.”

But the important point here is that it has to make MY life easier, for problems I face.

#3 – Arm me with Tools – And stay out of my way (until I need you)
Here is what I would ask if I were buying hosting today.

If you are so worried about my infrastructure, so fanatical about making sure I’m ok, so smart with your systems, your builds, and your servers… why are most of your protection and safety mechanisms “separate” from your products? Don’t tell me you have great hosting, great support, and a great SLA, and then nickel and dime me for monitoring and for managed backup.  These should be part of the service. They should be CORE to everything I pay you for.

Applying this to the IT Manager Today: Making Hosting Easier
I take everything above to heart when we are outlining the Codero road map and overall strategy. As an example, this is why I made sure that with the launch of Smart Servers, they were actually “smarter” than just a traditional Dedicated Server.

I ensured that with Smart Servers, Backups are built in. Not only that, but as an incentive for good behavior, I made sure they are FREE. Smart Servers are one of those things I always wanted back in the 90’s… a safety net that was unobtrusive to my app, and allowed me to very easily protect against disaster. A server time machine…

With the launch of Smart Servers we wanted to make sure that:

1) We didn’t waste our customer’s time by trying to bolt on a backup solution that inevitably would fail or change in price someday. I didn’t want a solution where Codero or the customer would have to chase backup jobs that failed all the time.

2) We made our customer’s life simpler. When someone gets a Smart Server, they no longer have to worry about private networking or a recovery plan. It’s there… it’s ready. And by the way, if you ever want to migrate to new hardware… it’s a seamless, painless, and fast process.

3) We armed our customers with tools that matter to be successful. With Smart Servers customers can set up their own schedules of snapshots. They can restore or rewind the clock, on their own if they want to. Furthermore, Smart Servers are built ready for Hybrid Hosting inter-connectivity (tying a dedicated server environment to a Cloud server environment so that they look logically interconnected).

4) Smart Servers came with the same Exceptional Service levels that one would expect from Codero. Codero support is here to take care of you when you need it… and stay out of your way when you don’t.

Let me know what you think about my “rules” above. If there are other things you are worried about as an IT Manager, or that you would like to see for your hosting, leave a comment or send us a note. I would love to hear your thoughts.

As always, if you have any questions regarding Smarts Servers, Snapshots or any of our exceptional hosting services please email us at product@codero.com, call (1-866-2-CODERO) or chat with us.

Oh IT Managers – Please demand more, you deserve better…smarter…faster! is a post from: Codero dedicated hosting blog

Ladies and gentlemen - It’s big, it’s data, it’s big data. It was the talk of the town at CloudCon Expo in San Francisco this week. CloudCon Expo was a great event. It was great to meet and talk to so many peers, partners, customers and people from across the industry. One of the highlights for me was participating in the CEO-only, keynote panel, the “POWER Panel: The Business of Cloud & Big Data” – with the likes of other industry thought leaders. From industry legend Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus (former CEO of MySQL AB); and Ron Bodkin, CEO of Think Big Analytics; to cloud Pioneer Chris Kemp, CEO of Nebula and OpenStack evangelist; and Lawrence Guillory, CEO of Racemi, the message was clear, cutting-edge and undeniable – Big Data is here, the cloud is ready and here is how to do it. We are still at the beginning of this crossover, and the enterprise as well as developers demand the many lessons our industry has to share.

As a cloud pioneer, I have had the distinguished experience of building the largest of cloud businesses at HP and Rackspace, on to the present where we witness the founding work we put into things like OpenStack changing the industry, and our growing success story now at Codero.  These are exciting times where cloud technology is still getting better and Big Data is one of the most intriguing use case developments for the cloud on the scene. As I told the audience, cloud and Big Data have a very natural intersection; however, I was clear to point out that Public Cloud is not the end-all-be-all answer to big data hosting. The entire panel agreed on the following points.

Big Data, perhaps you’ve heard it’s the “next” big thing. It’s actually the “now” big thing, gaining prominence as more and more corporate, client, and personal information grows exponentially day-by-day (and much of it as cloud-data). The opportunity of Big Data and predictive analytics lies in the ability for a company to increase actionable knowledge of their business, market information, and customers. Everywhere you look companies are realizing the value of this immense source of information at their fingertips.  It is data we all want, that we expect in our interactions, in smooth experiences, companies want it and it is changing how we operate, how we problem solve, and how we think.  From the commercial applications like Walmart that processes billions of points of data each day, to the scientific side of the spectrum as it is being utilized in ongoing genome research, Big Data is here to stay.

The technologies that drive Big Data are diverse. There are many standard and emerging platforms in the field.  One of the technologies many are familiar with is Hadoop, a leading framework that is open-source and has a large installed base. Among the many feature points of this and other platforms is that these leading frameworks are constructed with the enterprise in mind, with many points and methods of processing and built-in tolerance of node failure. Big Data infrastructure is all about scale – a wide base of computing that is fast, fault-tolerant, and highly available – after all you are aggregating and analyzing mission-critical company data.  That brings up another critical point in that Big Data requires big performance because of the amount of data systems are expected to handle. That’s why you see systems enabled with flash, tons of RAM, and specialized configurations being utilized.

We at Codero have always believed that a Hybrid Approach of using traditional dedicated host infrastructure and Cloud Computing technologies is the right answer – contrary to many pundits.

• Big Data requires strong I/O performance, and a highly reliable infrastructure
• For strong performance and scalability reasons, you need to have the choice to deploy infrastructure that meets the specific needs of your Big Data application.

It’s a very specialized and custom proposition that requires an architecture that combines the best of cloud computing and traditional hosting.

In doing so, one can leverage “cloud servers” to quickly scale on-demand to meet sudden spikes in processing while keeping your Big Data on a dedicated (single-tenant) backend for cost reasons. We have seen that at constant workload levels, or for storing data at rest, dedicated solutions are as much as 3X less expensive than public cloud.

As we review the thought process that goes into Big Data architectures, keep in mind there are various flavors and varieties of Big Data and even cloud out there. So we are staying general, while being descriptive of these emerging constructs. 

Considering Big Data Needs and Risks

Surely, a pure cloud solution has significant advantages, some weaknesses and a cost structure that you need to consider. Some thought points of Big Data in a pure cloud situation include:

• Integration with other applications
• Risk
• Performance
• Control
• Value

Big Data is not all that different from a number of cutting-edge technologies in that they require critical, enterprise-grade, high-performance systems, and they hold sensitive business data.  Today’s CIO faces the same questions over and over again when it comes to contemplating cloud.

• What is the definition of cloud – Are we actually talking cloud and which flavor? Or is it simple hosting?
• Are the cloud models and providers mature enough to work with my requirements?
• How are we defining requirements – Performance, SLA, Multi-tenant, Geo-balancing, Capacity, Enterprise-readiness, Regulations, etc.
• Are we ready for the cloud? – Every situation is unique.

Lining it up:  Big Data and Hybrid Cloud

In general, some apps are quite natural for pure cloud environments, and in other situations, hybrid and even dedicated hosting will win out.  Big Data falls into this second category because as a general rule, when systems are put into the cloud, there should never be a compromise of services, performance or reasonable control.  Big Data infrastructure demands among other things – flexible, configurable networking, workload and throughput balancing, and highly redundant systems, while maintaining the ability to scale easily and quickly. This list screams hybrid cloud environment, and this is reinforced by the following characteristics:

• Bare metal performance of dedicated servers
• Oriented as a service to systems and applications
• Not directly intended for public consumption
• Proprietary and Confidential data
• High-performance requirements
• High Availability infrastructure requirements
• Tight IT management

In the big picture, with rare exception, Big Data needs follow one or more of these general descriptions. A hybrid infrastructure solution will:

• Offer highest performance due to bare metal dedicated servers
• Offer highest configurability and flexibility in design
• Have the ability to quickly add capacity due to automation, and use of cloud as needed
• Be more secure due to dedicated servers
• Reduce risk
• Offer better management and reporting

A pure cloud environment simply cannot deliver on Big Data requirements in terms of price advantage, infrastructure capabilities, and business needs as effectively as a hybrid solution. We believe Big Data is the next killer app for hybrid clouds made of automated dedicated hosted servers, and virtualized cloud servers.

Making the Case – Hybrid Clouds are Ideal for most Big Data

The risks of putting mission-critical systems into environments that cannot meet present or future needs are too great, and if you look at it, hybrid environments are the best option.  In the enterprise and across the world, mission-critical applications and especially Big Data systems have to be built on the best available architecture that best suits its needs.  The case is clear, hybrid architecture delivers on all the specialized requirements that real-world Big Data systems entail.  Hybrid cloud architecture are also best suited to meet business requirements, including risk, management, compliance, security, and adds considerable cost savings as well – without sacrificing a thing. 

As always, let me know your thoughts, and if you have any questions by emailing me here.

About: Codero Hosting delivers a hybrid cloud offering with unparalleled support, featuring the best of cloud capabilities and dedicated hosting performance along with cost advantages that are custom-built. Chat with us for more info. Emil Sayegh is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. Emil joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.

Better off with Hybrid – Big Data needs cloud and dedicated servers is a post from: Codero dedicated hosting blog